


the kids aren't alright

by sadathena



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9183277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadathena/pseuds/sadathena
Summary: “The universe is big. It’s vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles.”;;an AU in which Harry and the gang return for their seventh year at Hogwarts only to find that all is not yet well, that danger still lurks around the corner, and that their newest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor isn't quite all that she seems.;;meanwhile, the Doctor owes an old friend a favor, and who better to help him repay it than River Song?





	1. A New Kind of Witch

**Author's Note:**

> I originally saw this idea floating around tumblr, quite a long time ago. I started it as a pretentious fifteen year old and now I'm attempting to finish it as a semi-pretentious almost adult.

The second day of classes at Hogwarts was a beautiful one. The sun burned down onto sprawling grounds with purpose, the Black Lake reflecting the light like a great smooth mirror back into the heavens. The wind was calm, weaving through the leaves of the Forbidden Forest gently. It was a tranquil day, a serene day.

Harry Potter was anything but tranquil and serene. The transition from what his normal everyday life had become back to just another year at Hogwarts was a baffling one. The signs of the war victorious could be seen everywhere, from the lack of suits of armor to the scars on the brick walls. Hogwarts had been rebuilt almost into an exact copy of what it had been, but the slight tense disruption in the air could still be felt. It was almost like they were in a different dimension, just a second out of step with the rest of the world. Emptier benches during meal time remembered people they had lost, and the tense, white line of Professor McGonagall’s mouth as her eyes searched every student from behind her spectacles remembered the trauma they had all been through. No matter how many times his eyes swept the Great Hall that morning, each time his gaze was avoided by both teacher and student alike. And yet, he could still feel eyes on him, on his back, burrowing into the back of his head.

Even the Slytherins were different, though it was the lack of tension there, rather than the addition of it that made Harry itch. He almost wished one of them would jeer at him, or collide with him in the corridor, just for a sense of normalcy.

(But that wasn't exactly true. There was too much there now, what had begun as an uneasy truce settling into what was almost familiarity. Harry couldn't find it in himself to dislike Slytherins anymore, even the ones whose parents had been pardoned Death Eaters, or the first years who had been too young to be held accountable for their parents' crimes. Perhaps once, before, he would've been able to. But no more. There was nothing left in his heart for grudges)

Quite frankly, Harry wasn’t looking forward to Defense Against the Dark Arts, their second class of the morning. The dark arts had been a huge part of his life for far too long, and now that it was finally over, he never wanted to hear about curses and jinxes again, even if it was only a discussion of the counter act. Both Ron and Hermione seemed to be of a similar opinion as all three of them shuffled down to the classroom from their Charms lesson.

“Well, it’s just one class, innit?” Ron said weakly as the door grated open at Harry’s tugging.

“I’ve heard the new professor’s brilliant,” Hermione added. Harry knew they were both just trying to make him feel better--they understood. They had been there during the hunt for the Horcruxes. But he didn’t think anything they said would ease the tight knot forming in the pit of his stomach. He merely nodded and headed in after them, glancing around to see if the new professor had changed anything. The windows were all flung open, a breeze tempted in by the curtains, which had been let loose from their velvet bindings for once. The professor was nowhere to be found. Most of the class was already there, but unlike the past years, there was no pleasant chatter going on before the arrival of the instructor. From a table across the room, Draco Malfoy met Harry's eyes. He looked away after a heartbeat, but Harry got the feeling he'd almost wanted to smile. Perhaps there was one more person in the room who really understood.

“Can’t be worse than Umbridge, I guess.” Harry grumbled, sliding his book onto the table. Charms had not gone badly, but it certainly hadn't gone well. And it was only the first day.

“You won’t be needing that, sweetie.”

The voice came from the stairway ahead, and out of the teacher’s office a woman came. She wasn’t wearing robes--quite to the contrary, her Muggle clothes were shockingly plain. On the other hand, her hair was anything but plain. It stood away from her head so magnificently that even Hermione’s at its bushiest couldn’t compete, and the sunlight glancing off it from the open windows couldn’t have made it more golden. There was a small smile on her plump lips as she surveyed the class with quiet interest. Any other year, Harry was sure he would’ve heard snickers or scoffs from the Slytherin side of the room--but there was nothing. No one made a sound.

“Yes, you heard me right, put your books away, darlings.” she said, very suddenly penetrating the silence. As she did, her eyes fell on Harry, and her smile grew--but it wasn’t the same forced, tight smile people who knew him well enough often gave him, but neither was it the joyous, grateful smile those who didn’t know him at all greeted him with. It was the kind of smile meant only for one person, as if this new professor was sharing a secret with him, or some sort of inside joke. He felt very guilty all of a sudden, and he had no idea why.

As suddenly as she had spoken, the new professor turned her back to the class and picked up a piece of chalk--and oddly enough, she turned it in her fingers with a look of distaste. “How delightfully antique...” Harry thought he heard her mutter as she put it to the board. He shared a look with Ron, who only gave him a shrug and a small smile.

“Not half bad, I say.” he said quietly. But Harry got the oddest vibe from this new professor--and he couldn’t tell if it was a positive or a negative one.

“My name is Professor Song.” the woman said, her voice cool as she wrote her name on the board. With the hand that wasn’t writing, Professor Song--what an odd name--reached into her pocket and removed a wand. Like everything else about this professor, it was the strangest wand Harry had ever seen. It was shorter and thicker than any Harry had seen before, and the wood it was made from--if it was even wood, and looking closely at it, Harry thought that up for debate--had a kind of luminosity to it. “And this year, I’ll be teaching you how not to die.”

Harry felt a lump of irritation rise in his throat at this phrasing--considering what they had been through, Professor Song was being quite insensitive, in his opinion. Did she think all the people they had lost were just wanting for a good DADD teacher? And where had she been, during the war? She seemed the sort Dumbledore would’ve wanted on his side. So why was she just popping up now? He opened his mouth to say something, but the professor went on as if she didn’t notice. Harry got the feeling there was little to nothing this woman didn’t notice.

“This year,” Professor Song continued, that small smile still playing on her lips. “This year--well, I suppose you’ll find out.” Again, her eyes seemed to be straying in Harry’s direction. Hermione looked left, and looked right, and Ron seemed to realize what she was going to do before she did it, the movement was so familiar. He leaned slightly to his right as Hermione’s hand shot into the air to avoid being slapped.

“Yes, Miss Granger?” Professor Song said, leaning against her desk and crossing her arms. At this point, Harry barely spared a thought as to how the new professor knew Hermione’s name. The whole wizarding world knew their three names now.

“I was just wondering--Does that mean you’re not going to give us a syllabus, Professor?” Hermione said curiously.

Professor Song’s smile spread almost deviously, and for the third time, her eyes lighted on Harry. “Spoilers, sweetie.” she answered Hermione, her voice filled with a kind of secret mirth as she turned back to the board.


	2. Familiar Foreboding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Professor Song is plenty popular amongst his classmates--so why can't Harry seem to shake the feeling that something isn't right?

Harry left Professor Song’s classroom with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want this year to turn out like all his other years at school--for once, he just wanted to have a quiet semester, fret about homework, fret about NEWTs, listen to Ron and Hermione bicker about whether Hermione was going to write Ron’s essays, and get it done. But it seemed the strange and uncanny just wasn’t going to leave him alone.

“I like her.” Hermione said immediately as the classroom door swung shut behind her. Professor Song had begun teaching immediately, without another word of introduction, gauging each person’s knowledge by giving them a random scenario and asking them what they would do in such a case. Several times she had snatched up an object from her desk and flung it at them, testing their reflexes and their reaction to surprise. Afterwards, she had begun going over simple propulsion spells with them to deflect flying objects, something Harry would’ve liked to have known while he was still with the Dursleys. It was simple stuff, really, but the lesson moved quickly. Professor Song had quite a lot to say about strategy in a duel, and an impish quality about her that wasn’t exactly threatening, but kept the entire class on the edge of their seats, unsure of what she might do next.

But Harry seemed to be the only one that noticed Professor Song herself never demonstrated any spell, like all their other DADD teachers had done. Even Umbridge had done magic in front of them often enough, despite her refusal to teach it to them. Professor Song had also never called on Harry during her lesson, not once, though she had reason enough to notice him there, while she was answering each and every one of Hermione’s questions with special care, and also with questions of her own.

(Harry had only met one other professor who answered questions with questions, and that had been Remus Lupin. His heart pounded uncomfortably against his ribs, like it had suddenly swollen to twice its size, at the thought of his dead friend. Professor Song did not ask questions of them like she was leading them patiently to some academic epiphany, but more like she was genuinely curious, like she needed information from them just as much as they needed it from her)

“I suppose.” he grunted, hoisting his bag farther up his shoulder. He glanced sideways at Hermione, wondering if it was paranoia that made him so suspicious of the new professor, or if the feeling was shared. “Where d’you think she got that wand of hers?”

“What about her wand?” Ron said, appearing on the other side of Hermione. He continued without waiting on an answer. “Sort of brilliant, though, in’t she? I thought MacMillan was going to piss his pants when she threw that dictionary at him.”

“Perhaps she’s foreign.” Hermione suggested. “Maybe that’s why she was in the Muggle clothes.”

“She didn’t sound foreign.” Harry countered.

Hermione and Ron both looked at each other, then back at Harry. Hermione’s brows pinched together at the center. “Harry, there’s nothing fishy about Professor Song.” she said cautiously. “She’s just eccentric.”

“I never said there was anything wrong with her!” Harry bristled, getting his back up.

“You’ve got that face on, mate,” Ron said gravely. “That face you get on when you’re about to get yourself into trouble.”

“We’ve had plenty of trouble.” Hermione went on with a nod. “Let’s not make it where there is none to be had, okay?”

Harry looked from Ron to Hermione and their somewhat concerned, but mostly stern faces. “Yeah.” he said, trying to offer them a smile, though the cold feeling in his stomach hadn’t yet gone away. “Alright.”

* * *

It wasn’t until after Transfiguration that Harry mentioned Professor Song again--and it wasn’t to Ron or Hermione. “I’ll catch up.” he said quietly to them, as they hovered by the door to wait for him. They looked at each other, something they seemed to be doing a lot of these days, and as one turned and left the classroom. Harry supposed they figured he needed to talk to McGonagall about something else, like the lesson. And they were both all too eager to be alone with each other these days.

Harry lingered, purposely dragging his feet as he packed up his things until every other student had emptied out. “Is there something you need, Potter?” McGonagall said, without looking up from the in-class essays she had just collected. “A question about your essay, perhaps?”

“Not quite, Professor.” Harry replied, shouldering his bag and moving to the front of the room. “I wanted to ask you--about Professor Song.” Gone were the days when Harry kept things he saw going wrong to himself, or kept silent about suspect people for fear that he wouldn’t be believed. Too often they had ended in tragedy. And he knew for a fact that if there was any teacher in Hogwarts he could trust, it was Minerva McGonagall.

McGonagall blinked, taken aback. “What about her? I thought that you of all people would appreciate her rather... unconventional style.”

Harry looked down at his hands, wondering how he could phrase his suspicion without sounding like a moron. “She...” he paused. “She’s... she looks at me, Professor. More than she looks at anyone else.” Most people went out of their way not to be caught staring at Harry--Professor Song simply smiled whenever their eyes met, that same smile, as if they were sharing a secret.

McGonagall frowned. “Potter, however much you may dislike attention, surely you must have gotten used to it by now.”

“It’s not only that.” Harry said, shaking his head. He was frustrated and confused--he had always been bad at explaining things, but never this bad. “Where’d you find her? Her wand is-”

Professor McGonagall held up a hand, her mouth tightening into a thin line. “Potter.” she said sternly. “You are the savior of the Wizarding world, no one is doubting that. But staffing decisions are still up to the interim headmistress, and until we find a new headmaster, that would be me. I simply can’t be seen giving you insight into matters that are really none of your business while you remain a student here.” McGonagall’s frown deepened, and now she simply looked concerned. “Be a boy, Potter. Play Quidditch, and have a good time with Weasley and Granger--don’t drive yourself mad over nothing. Voldemort is dead--let’s not resurrect any old fear where it isn’t deserved.”

Before he knew it, Harry was being ushered out of the classroom, his head feeling slightly foggy. “But, Professor-” McGonagall shut the door on him, leaving him in the empty corridor. He shouldered his bag, huffing out a long, slow breath. The only other sound was that of the tramp of feet on the floor above him, and the voices drifting in from the grounds through an open window a corridor over. It was another beautiful day, and Hogwarts was coming to life again, new memories covering up any trace of the old ones.

_Let’s not resurrect any old fear where it isn’t deserved._

_We’ve had plenty of trouble. Let’s not make it where there’s none to be had._

Hermione, Ron, and McGonagall seemed to be telling him the same thing. _Don’t stir anything up. We’ve had enough stirring._ Harry sighed and made his way up to the Gryffindor common room, already feeling like it had been a mistake to come back for his seventh year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! chapters will of course get longer as the story pushes on.


	3. Spoilers (Finally!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If River Song is here, and Dumbledore is dead, then why is the TARDIS making that funny noise?

River Song reclined in her office, twirling the sonic screwdriver back and forth between her fingers. The concoction she had placed on it was a common narcotic from a planet in the eighteenth sector inhabited by non-humanoid lifeforms with humanoid nervous systems--when anointed onto an object, as she had done, it disrupted the light waves and neural impulses of anyone coming into visual contact with that object. The brain, unable to process the information, would simply fill in the gaps. The children had expected to see a wand. So they had seen a wand. Quite illegal in most galaxies, but necessary. The human brain was a wondrous thing, but perception was such an easy thing to twist and predict. It was a damn good thing she had had some on hand.

The teachers had been a little trickier. She had papers, of course (or it _appeared_ that she had papers) but she was plainly not foreign, and no amount of papers could remedy the fact that they’d never seen her before, in such a small community. Thankfully, River had picked up a few more tricks from the eighteenth sector, including a small flash that fiddled with the processing of short term memory and muddled the thoughts in general, and would attach nicely onto the sonic. She didn’t know how healthy all this fiddling with the nervous system would be for her victims, but thankfully, she and her neural befuddling wouldn’t be around for long.

(At least, she didn't  _think_ they would)

What fascinated her, really, was the Potter boy. She had heard about him, sure--one could learn a lot about a foreign world by simply listening, and this place was simply _brimming_ with the boy’s name. She’d heard more fairy tales about him since she’d come to Hogwarts than anything else. She’d heard that he’d cheated death, that he possessed the most powerful wand in the world, that he had _once_ possessed the most powerful wand in the world, that he was a ghost, that ghosts followed him—the lists ran on and on. He was a hero to these people, a man made into myth before their very eyes. She had known many men like that. What River saw when she looked at him was an eighteen year old boy grown before his time, bright, curious, but stubborn, with a temper lurking in the tightness of his jaw. She saw a boy who was uncomfortable with attention, who would certainly prefer anonymity to fame.

But he hadn’t seemed to warm up to her as the other children had--River would be lying if she said she hadn’t spritzed some of that narcotic onto herself once it had been watered down. Just to be safe, to make her a touch more approachable. More trustworthy. She strongly suspected whatever she was there to do involved Harry Potter—there had to be some way to make him see that she was no threat. Not truly.

Outside, warm English sunshine poured into her office, and from her window she could see the monstrous lake sloping away from the castle grounds. The battle, the terrible battle she knew just enough about to not cause suspicion, had left scars--places where the grass was short and new, places where flowers had just begun to grow again, and some places that had been touched by curses so terrible nothing would ever grow there again. With a small huff of discontentment, River turned herself back to her desk--it was very nice having an office all to herself for once--and with a press of a button on the sonic, the bottom drawer unlocked itself and rolled open.

There was only one thing inside, lying on its back in the very center of the drawer. A small model of a familiar blue police box, chipped a bit on the corner, the sign on the front door faded, the windows mostly opaque. River stooped down to pick it up, pulling the little flap on the front open and letting the small slip of paper inside fall out onto the surface of her desk.

It was written in loopy, slanted handwriting, a little too big for the paper and slightly crooked. River smiled as her eyes traced over its words--she had read it so many times the edges were beginning to fray and yellow at her fingertips.

> _River,_
> 
> _Where are we now?Are you out of prison yet? If I’ve gotten this right, I think so. If not, don’t even read the rest of this. Spoilers, you always say._
> 
> _Time just flies, doesn’t it? I should know, eh? I’m sorry I didn’t have time to come and see you myself, but really, I thought you would enjoy this. An old friend of mine--delightful chap, name of Dumbledore--asked me a favor once. Now’s the time to repay it. Enclosed is a vortex manipulator. I’m sure by now you know how to work it. But be warned--it will only work three times. You know I can’t just let you run amok with it, right? You’ll only need it three times, anyway, so don’t go overusing it. Just pack up some things and put it on and it will take you where you need to be. My advice? I think they need a new teacher. You’ll understand when you arrive. I’m sure you’ll think of something. Follow my instructions to the letter. Oh, and don’t worry about those--you’ll find them when the time is right._
> 
> _And River--be very careful._
> 
> _Love from, the Doctor._
> 
> _P.S., the TARDIS is making that funny noise again. Should I use the red setting or the green setting?_

River folded the letter back into its shape and placed it gently back into the model TARDIS, smiling to herself. She trusted the Doctor implicitly, and if he said her instructions as to how to fulfill this favor he owed Dumbledore would appear when she needed them, she believed it. Plus, she was having quite a lot of fun already.


	4. There's No Team In Conflict Diffusion

The weeks of the semester passed by with an almost infuriating slowness. No matter how hard he tried, Harry couldn’t get back into the flow of things. He wasn’t sleeping well; he was falling dangerously behind on his homework; and worst of all, the infuriating Professor Song continued the pattern she had begun the very first lesson. She continued to focus her teaching on dueling strategy, on ways to outwit the enemy that had more to do with battle theory than the Dark Arts themselves. It was interesting, of course, but very different even for the variety of Hogwarts Defense instructors Harry had experienced. They learned spells, of course, an array of simple ones; protection spells and basic repulsion, for the most part, but the sheer magnitude of them contained within each lesson was enough to keep them all quite busy, even Hermione. Still Professor Song never demonstrated a spell for them. Still she had not called upon Harry once, had not asked him a single question, had not interacted with him in the slightest bit, other than to smile that same, secret smile.

Harry couldn’t get a handle on why he suspected her, but nor could he completely dismiss the gut feeling that something was different about her. And everyone just kept telling him to not make trouble. They’d had enough trouble.

Even Ginny had all but completely dismissed his suspicion. “There’s nothing wrong with her, Harry.” she had said as they perched in the same chair, next to the fire in the Gryffindor common room, doing her best to soothe him. It wasn’t working. “She’s bloody brilliant, really. You just need to get used to things again.”

And she was probably right. But Harry thought that was easier said than done.

There were other things that were different this year at Hogwarts, besides Professor Song. Harry had been unable to bear the thought of purchasing another owl after Hedwig, and was mostly sharing Ron’s, as most of his letters were coming from Mrs. Weasley anyway. Bill and Fleur sent him regular letters as well, as they had taken little Teddy Lupin in until Harry finished his schooling and settled into a more stable living situation. That in itself was a little scary; that soon, there would be a child that fell to Harry’s responsibility. But he was his godfather, after all. He remembered Sirius, and how much his father’s old friend had meant to him, and each time, it gave him heart, and a little bit of hope. If he could be to Teddy Lupin what Sirius had been to him, then he would feel he made some kind of difference.

There were even other new teachers as well; Slughorn had retired, permanently this time, replaced by a nervous old fellow called Babblebrook. He had likely once been a large, lively man, but he had diminished greatly with age, until all that remained of his former vitality was a pair of dark, bushy eyebrows set over two gleaming black eyes, dominating his creased and withered face. Harry suspected that he very much preferred potions to people, but unlike their new Defense professor, Babblebrook didn’t give Harry the slightest pause. The old man had admitted to Harry after their very first lesson in his soft, quavery voice that his wife had been jailed by the Ministry due to her Muggle heritage during Voldemort’s regime, and had not survived the dementors.

(People were always telling Harry things like that, with sentimental glimmer in their eyes, clutching onto his hand. Harry knew that they were thanking him, but that didn’t make it any easier. He couldn’t help but think that if he’d worked faster, if he’d found the Horcruxes sooner, that Mrs. Babblebrook and others like her might be alive)

He had letters from Kingsley Shacklebolt as well, though these were infrequent, and rather short when they did come. Kingsley spoke mostly of the state of the Ministry, and ways in which Harry could help the new administration over his Christmas break and once he left school. Harry had, of course, already given his full support to Kingsley and his heads of department. He’d sat for a handful of interviews with _The Daily Prophet_ on Kingsley’s advice, though he suspected that the story they really wanted was the one he would not tell. He didn’t want to talk about Tom Riddle, or the Forbidden Forest, and nobody really blamed him.

They were only three weeks into the term, a crisp autumn morning, when his reluctance came back to bite him.

“Don’t worry about them, Harry. It’s nothing. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” Hermione was firm, and, appearing on his other side, Ginny rested a warm hand on his elbow. Harry looked from one of their faces to the other, a bit confused as he straightened up his tie on his way to the portrait hole.

“Yeah, mate, it’s nothing.” Ron drifted in behind Hermione, his hands stuck in his pockets, his shoulders hunched forward, one of his most common defensive positions. “Slimy buggers, the lot of them.”

“What are _any_ of you talking about?” Harry turned round to face them, suspicious. All three of them stopped short, and both Ron and Ginny looked to Hermione. She looked from one Weasley to the other, color rising in her cheeks.

“Well, don’t look at _me_ ,” she hissed. “ _I thought he’d already seen it_.”

“I _told_ you he didn’t read the papers before lunch-”

“ _I_ told you he doesn’t read the papers at _all-”_

Harry was becoming more frustrated with every word. He was hungry, and he was already going to be late to breakfast. On top of that, Professor Song’s class was that morning, and the gnawing, uncomfortable feeling in Harry’s gut each time he thought about sitting through another of her lectures was enough to put him on edge. “What _about_ the bloody papers?”

Ron, Hermione, and Ginny fell silent. Carefully, deliberately, Hermione reached into her robes and removed the special Sunday evening edition of _The Daily Prophet._ Harry took it from her, his eyes roving from Ron’s face, pale and worried, to Hermione’s, earnest and weary, and finally to Ginny, who came to stand yet again at his elbow, running a hand up his back and over his shoulder. He took comfort in her presence there and flipped the paper open.

The front page was normal enough; the drummer for The Weird Sisters was getting married again. Donations being made to the families of those lost in The Battle of Hogwarts—that was a bit jarring to see, but not enough to warrant this kind of concern from Ron, Hermione, and Ginny. Harry made a mental note to himself to arrange for some of his own money to be sent. The second page, however, was dominated by a picture of him, blinking rather owlishly at the camera. He didn’t remember exactly when it had been taken, but it had been during one of the interviews he’d done soon after Kingsley’s appointment as permanent Minister of Magic. The puff of powders and the flash had caught him by surprise. Again and again, on a short, three second loop, he watched himself draw back, blink, and sneeze. Well, that was nothing new, of course.

It was the headline, bold along the top of the photo, that swelled up in his throat, sinking painfully down into his chest, like a thousand little glass shards burrowing into the lining of his esophagus. **_HARRY POTTER: LIAR, OR LEGEND?_**

“It’s utter rubbish, Harry.” Ginny’s voice sounded like it was coming from a long way off, like Harry was deep underwater somewhere. “We wouldn’t have even shown it to you, but we thought you might have already seen it, and—the editor must know it’s trash. They didn’t even give the smarmy prat a front page.”  
****

Harry’s eyes glossed over the by-line—the article was attributed to a Mr. Daventree Rosewell, who did, in fact, sound like a smarmy prat—and down to the contents of the article. _Refuses to speak on his final battle with You-Know-Who… no details released…few assurances to the public…really dead?_

Come again? Harry scanned over that last line, disbelief like a weight settling into a familiar position on his shoulders.

_Is it all a lie? With Potter and the rest of those present at the Battle of Hogwarts so scant on their accounts, and with no body produced, must we wonder if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is even really dead_?

“See, it’s nothing.” Hermione rolled her eyes, though Harry could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was worried about something. “ _Dozens_ of people saw what happened that day with You-Know-Wh—with Voldemort.” Ron shifted uncomfortably on his feet; most wizards and witches were still becoming accustomed to speaking of Voldemort by name.

“I remember. I was there, Hermione.” Harry handed Hermione back her copy of the paper, and adjusted his robes. After all this time, after the hunt for the Horcruxes, after Dumbledore’s death, after the battle, there were still those who were suspicious of him, who didn’t trust him. Of course, he couldn’t expect the entire Wizarding World to take him at his word, but the whole Order of the Phoenix had been there that day. The new Minister of Magic had been there.

All in all, the article didn’t really _mean_ anything—the people who were important to Harry knew the truth, and _he_ knew it as well, without a doubt. Tom Riddle was gone, reduced to a flayed, lifeless misery huddled in a train station somewhere in the ether (as if any journalist would’ve believed _that_ if Harry had told them). But it stung, just the slightest bit, and only added to his growing feeling of foreboding. His life had been steadily improving since Voldemort had died, since his scar had stopped paining him, since he’d disposed of the Elder Wand and lost the Resurrection Stone—he couldn’t help but think that these sudden downturns in fortune couldn’t have happened by coincidence.

* * *

They caught the tail end of breakfast, and Ron and Hermione did their best to keep Harry’s spirits up during Charms. For the most part, they were successful. Professor Flitwick left the window open in an attempt to air out the stuffy classroom, and Harry could just see the crown of the Whomping Willow, shaking its aging leaves off like a cat shakes water. A chilly breeze ruffled his hair and goosebumps prickled underneath his robes, but it was pleasant in a nostalgic sort of way. They were learning about relativity charms, which altered the internal proportions of an object relative to its external appearance, usually to make it seem smaller than it was in truth. It was a complicated process that required huge amounts of focus that Harry simply couldn’t award to Charms at the moment. Hermione, of course, was already embarrassingly accomplished at it; Harry wondered if her beaded bag was still stowed away somewhere.

“You’d think Flitwick’d be used to it by now,” Ron was saying as they exited the classroom. “You being so good at everything right away.”

From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione’s cheeks flame pink. Ron’s compliments _did_ tend to fluster her a bit, especially in light of recent events.

“Well, _bags_ are one thing, I’ve got a long way to go before I can do anything with cars, like the Ministry does-”

Their voices fell away as the three of them climbed the stairs to the Defense classroom. All around them, Harry saw eyes on him, darting away as soon as they were noticed. Talk was hushed, and though he had no proof, Harry felt certain they were talking about him. This was _all_ too reminiscent of his fifth year, the year that the Ministry had so firmly denied the return of Voldemort, and made Harry their scapegoat.

_Surely_ this wasn’t about the article in _The Daily Prophet_? Surely no one really _believed_ it? Didn’t they remember, just a few short years ago, when the paper had done their absolute best to make both Dumbledore and Harry out to be heinous liars? Didn’t they remember that they had been _wrong_?

“Oi, mate, why don’t you paint yourself a portrait? Might last a bit longer.”

It appeared Harry wasn’t the only one who had noticed the attention he was garnering. A Hufflepuff first year, staring at Harry with huge eyes and whispering feverishly to a companion, turned ashen, and fled at Ron’s challenge. Ron scoffed. “Nosy blighters, aren’t they?” He grinned, nudging Harry with an elbow. “Come on, Harry. The little ones are just curious about you is all.”

Harry wanted to tell Ron that it hadn’t _just_ been first years staring at him in the corridor, whispering to their friends, but here they were, at Professor Song’s open classroom door. Inside, the long tables they typically sat at were gone. The room seemed much larger without them, the vaulted ceilings somehow taller. Like in Professor Flitwick’s classroom, the windows had all been thrown open, and a leaf, blown in with the wind, crunched beneath Harry’s foot.

Professor Song made her usual entrance from the top of the staircase, rubbing her hands together. “Hello, darlings,” she said, lips pressed together as though she were trying not to smile. She did not succeed, and her mouth curled up at the corners, mischief glinting in her eyes. Her Muggle clothes remained, ordinary, nothing at all like the eccentric mismatching of witches and wizards who attempted to replicate a Muggle wardrobe. “Today, we are going to discuss the most important part of any conflict— _avoiding_ one.”

There was a general murmur of confusion around the room, and next to him, Ron mumbled something unintelligible to Hermione. Harry didn’t bother turning to look at them. He kept his face turned upward, to Professor Song, who descended the stairwell slowly.

“My job is to teach you how to defend yourselves. And the greatest gift I could give you is the ability to diffuse a conflict before it begins. Split up into pairs, or groups of three, if you wish-”

Before Ron, Hermione, or even his better judgment could stop him, Harry spoke up. “Professor,” he said, and despite his suspicions about the professor, Harry had matured enough to know that he should remain at least superficially polite. “Professor, I don’t know what you mean.”

Professor Song skipped the very bottom stair, landing neatly on the floor, drawing level with them. Her smile grew, and she took a step forward. The students at the front moved aside for her. “Elaborate, Mr. Potter.”

Harry straightened up, clearing his throat. A plan, thrown together rather rashly, and with much haste, was surfacing in the back of his mind. This was the perfect opportunity to prove to Ron and Hermione that all was not right with Professor Song. “I don’t know what you mean, Professor, by _diffusing a conflict_.”

Harry could practically feel Ron and Hermione _willing_ him back, but he ignored them. He stepped forward until he and Professor Song stood before each other, surrounded by a ring of students. Harry saw Draco Malfoy push to the front from the corner of his eye. Tension hummed in the air; Harry had been silent in Professor Song’s classes thus far.

“Surely, Mr. Potter, you know that if you do not _need_ to fight, you should not.”

“Yes, Professor, but if we are _defending_ ourselves, it must mean we’ve already been attacked. Nothing can be _diffused_ once someone has been attacked.” Harry struggled to keep his voice even and his temper under wraps. He had an opportunity, now, to _prove_ to everyone, to Ron, to Hermione, to himself, even, that he was _not_ simply paranoid.

“Where I come from, Mr. Potter, one can only be said to be defending oneself if one has made a marked effort to avoid the conflict.” Professor Song’s mild expression had not even wavered. The rest of the class was absolutely silent. “And it also depends _entirely_ on your definition of an attack. Some would consider this, now, what you are doing, as an attack.”

“With all due respect, Professor-” Behind him, Hermione was covering her face with both hands, one eye visible through her fingers. “-I think an example would-”

There was a flash. Harry blinked. What had he been about to say?

An example. “-would be-”

Another flash. Harry’s head swam. What _was_ that? He glanced around, swiftly, and saw his classmates blinking like dazed cattle. Even Hermione had dropped her hands away from her face, her eyes unfocused. Ron’s mouth had fallen just the slightest bit open. Harry fought to remain calm, though his memory was fuzzy and fast failing him.

“Do you have any other questions, Mr. Potter?”

It took the span of a heartbeat for Harry to realize it was him that Professor Song was speaking to. She was spinning her wand idly between long fingers, that same smile playing at the corners of her mouth. He shook his head. “Erm—pardon, Professor?”

“Questions, Mr. Potter.”

“Er, no, Professor.” Questions? Why would he have questions? Was that why he was standing in the center of the room? He hastily remedied this, stepping backwards to wedge himself in between Ron and the open window next to him. Outside, above the Forbidden Forest, a thestral beat its bat-like wings against the current of breezes, its feet skimming the treetops.

“Excellent. Now, if you could all split up into pairs, or groups of three, if you wish.”

* * *

 As they left Professor Song’s classroom, there was still something itching, nagging at the back of Harry’s mind. It was as though a stubborn fog was clearing, though his memory of the first ten minutes of the class remained uncertain.

“Blimey, I could use a nap,” Ron said, an attempt at cheer. “Think I dozed off there at the beginning.”

“Standing up?” Harry adjusted his grip on his booksack, his brow knitting together at the center.

“I think he could doze off _anywhere,_ Harry. Honestly, Ronald, if you’d only go to bed a little earlier-”

“ _Merlin,_ Hermione, it’s _uncanny_ sometimes how much you sound like Mum.”

“Well, I can’t help it that your mother and I are both _right-”_

They had arrived at the portrait hole for their break period and then lunch, and it was Harry who murmured the password, _Higginbotham,_ under his breath. Ron and Hermione were still bickering about Ron’s sleep schedule as they all dropped their bags and took seats near the window on the far side of the near-empty common room; they had no pressing homework to eat up their free time just yet. It was too warm for a fire, and Harry took a seat with his knees pulled up to his chest, his back pressed against the cool glass of the window behind him. Finally, after turning it over in his mind several times over, Harry could stand it no longer. “Do you two remember anything from the first few minutes of Defense?”

Ron was lounging next to Harry, his long legs draped out in front of him. His pants were just a little too short, and his socks that day were mismatched. “Told you, mate, I dozed off.”

“What about you, Hermione?”

Hermione opened her mouth, and then closed it. In her eyes Harry saw the exact same thing that he felt: the unpleasant sensation of searching for a memory you know must be there and finding only clouds.

“Well, I—we came in and the chairs and tables were gone, and we split into groups and we learned tension tamer spells.” But Harry could tell that Hermione wasn’t quite convinced.

“Before we got started, though. Professor Song told us what we’d be doing, and then it’s just—nothing. I asked her that question, about what she meant, and then it’s like there’s nothing but fog. Until we got started.”

Ron had laced his hands behind his head and was peering down his nose at Hermione, seated across from him, the very edge of her bent knee just brushing the outside of his calf. “Well, it took us all a few minutes to get separated into groups, I expect. What’s the problem, Harry?”

Harry paused; he had been examining the strange sensation within his own mind the whole walk back up to Gryffindor tower, and as such, he thought he had the words to put to it. Harry had learned from his mistakes in the past; something like this, something that put that odd, nagging feeling in his gut, was not to be ignored, and was not to be kept to himself. “It’s like—I know that time passed, at the beginning of that class, and I know I asked a question, but I can’t remember anything specific about it. And it’s not-” He went on before Ron could interrupt him, correctly predicting what Ron was about to say. “-as if _nothing_ specific happened. You remember when something happens, and you remember when nothing happens, but it’s just—foggy.” Harry could feel his heart rate elevating. Yet another idea was forming within him, growing from the tight knot of suspicion he had been nursing for weeks.

Hermione was scrutinizing Harry with a look he recognized, and she spoke carefully and deliberately. “Harry,” she said. “These are the exact symptoms of a Confundus Charm.”

Ron sat up, alarmed. “What, he’s been Confunded? Come off it, Hermione.”

“No,” Harry said, triumph straightening his spine. “We’ve _all_ been Confunded. And there’s only one person who could’ve Confunded all three of us, maybe even the whole class.”

“Harry, if you’re going to say Professor Song-”

“Why not? Why _not,_ Hermione?”

“Professor McGonagall hired her-”

“Less than ten years ago Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore hired a man with _Voldemort_ sticking out of the back of his head!” Harry’s voice was rising sharply with every word.

“Voldemort is _dead_ , Harry!”

“ _And you think I don’t know that_? _I killed him!”_

By the end, Harry was shouting. He was also standing, though he couldn’t remember getting to his feet. Hermione was pink, and Ron looked rather pale. “Harry, mate, you haven’t got to shout. We know you killed him.”

Harry sat down quickly, already feeling a little bit ashamed of his outburst. The back of his neck was warm, and he was glad the common room was empty. “Look,” he said, his voice lower, and just a bit strangled. “I know this feeling. It’s an instinct. And it hasn’t been wrong before. I wasn’t wrong about Quirrel, I wasn’t wrong about Lockhart, or Karkaroff, or Umbridge, or Malfoy. I wasn’t wrong then and I’m not wrong now.” He swallowed the little bit of his pride that attempted to choke him up. “Please.” Harry himself had been wrong, many times. But this feeling, this _specific_ feeling, had never led him astray.

Hermione closed her eyes and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, as though she felt a headache coming on. When she spoke, her voice broke. “I thought the trouble would be over. Now that he was dead, I thought it would be over.”

Shouting forgotten, with an uneasy glance at Harry, Ron shifted, tossing his arm around Hermione’s shoulders. “Alright, mate,” Ron finally said, squeezing Hermione to his chest. Harry fought the urge to look away, shaking off the feeling that he was witnessing a private moment. “I’ll give you this: something funny is going on with Professor Song.”

It was as though a weight had lifted from his shoulders. There had been a time when Harry had endeavored to do everything alone; he’d worried he would put his friends in danger. But together, they had faced the ultimate danger. Harry himself had narrowly avoided death; if some were to be believed, he hadn’t avoided it at all, and it simply hadn’t been ready to take him. Either way, he was done refusing to ask for help. That was how people got hurt. “And you’ll help me find out what it is?”

Hermione straightened up under Ron’s arm, her momentary lapse over with. “Of course we will, Harry. Of course we will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is obviously much longer than any of the others, which is why it took me so long to finish! Enjoy!


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